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Here’s a link to the post that got the discussion rolling:

• Praisegod Barebones: A Proposed Improvement to the Cooperative Program

By now most everyone is aware of the ongoing legal battle within the state of Missouri between our Southern Baptist state convention and the rogue agencies which unethically removed themselves from accountability to their founding churches by establishing self-perpetuating trustee boards thus making them independent of any MBC influence.  For years the issues have been argued in the courts, and recently decisions have been handed down in favor of at least two of these agencies.  While those issues appear to be settled, others remain. Depending on the ones with whom you are speaking, the situation either has a slight ray-of-hope or is lost altogether.

A major concern within this whole discussion is funding.  Up to this point, our convention has established a legal defense fund (now the Agency Recovery Group) and asked individuals and churches to give directly to that fund if they so desired.  Leading up to last October’s MBC annual meeting, the word got around that the ARG was going to ask that a fixed amount or percentage of Cooperative Program giving from our MBC churches be designated to the ARG fund.  That information, coupled with feedback gleaned by our state Executive Director from listening sessions he held all across the state, motivated the Executive Committee to bring forth the dual giving plan for our churches.  The following graphs show the breakdown of the plans:

The disconcerting factor for me in all of this is that Plan A is the default.  If churches do not meet in a business session and intentionally decide to opt for Plan B, then they will be de facto giving to the ARG without having to make any decision.  It seems to me that the Executive Committee and ARG presume that the majority of Missouri Baptists favor this kind of change away from CP dollars going to ministries and missions.  That is not what I have gathered from the listening session I attended as well as in talking with friends from across the state! Consequently, I have also heard very little emphasis from our convention leaders, etc., regarding this issue since the annual meeting, which leads me to believe that we could have churches who did not attend the meeting and who would desire to be a part of Plan B who may be completely unaware of the need to make their desire known to our convention (I discovered on the MBC website today a link to information about the new giving plan structures, but that is all I have seen or heard of since the convention meeting).

As a church, we opted for Plan B last night.  I still do not believe what the rogue agencies did was right.  I understand the  thoughts and desires of many within our convention when the course was set to take legal action.  I was not in Missouri then, but I am not certain that I would have favored that action even back then.  I am certainly favoring seeing a resolution to this issue sooner rather than later, even if it means ‘losing.’  I definitely do not want any of my Cooperative Program giving to go to anything other than the fulfillment and support of the commission and calling we have been given as churches of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In the environment of the Great Commission Resurgence discussions, if tweaking the Cooperative Program involves issues like this, I am all for making those kinds of changes. If tweaking the CP means ‘blowing it up…blow it all up,’ I am most certainly against that mindset.  We must be a Great Commission people gathered as Great Commission churches.  That starts by being convictional about truth, living out the application of the Gospel in our lives.  It most certainly includes being missional, intentionally communicating the Gospel message to other sinners who, like ourselves, need to know that there is a Redeemer who will save us from our sins.

By Grace Alone!

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Below are links to the items we discussed during the podcast:

Manhattan Declaration

Georgia Baptist Convention action

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Listen using the player below, or subscribe in iTunes by clicking the logo in this post or the iTunes link in the sidebar. Feel free to comment here with suggestions for how we can improve the podcast, and if you have a moment, leave us a comment or give us a rating in iTunes. And as always, thanks for listening.

Links to some of the items discussed in episode 13:

• Missouri Baptist Convention meeting
• FBC Dallas building plans
• NAMB’s Evangelism Response Center

You can listen using the player below, or subscribe to our podcast in iTunes by clicking the image in this post or the link in the sidebar. We’d love to hear from you about how we can improve the podcast, so leave a comment for us here and let us know. And while you’re at our iTunes page, we’d be grateful if you’d give us a review or just a rating.

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Our discussion this week focused on articles by or about state convention executive directors. Here are links to those articles:

• The Alabama Baptist
• Pathway (Missouri)
• Baptist Messenger (Oklahoma)

A CAUTION AND REMINDER

Unless wisdom flees from us, Baptists will ever see to it that churches, churches and the New Testament type of preachers, meritorious preachers, are, in the right sense, the constant center of their concern, the first objects of proper honor and credit for denominational accomplishments and acquirements—not Boards, nor Associations, nor even Conventions, not Secretaries. These four instruments or agencies are legitimate, highly proper, and useful, indispensable, but they and their funds all stem from the churches and preacher-pastors. There is no iota of discredit here, of course, for these four agencies, but it must be said that there is an alarming drift in thought and practice, particularly in some quarters, in the direction that responsibility and most credit belong to Boards, Secretaries and Conventions. The writer hastens to say that he sees no such drift in Arkansas. History and experience show that where credit is placed, sooner or later right there control will be placed. Where credit abides control will reside. Boards, Associations, Conventions, and Secretaries are necessary, we repeat, and worthy and deserve a great measure of credit, but major credit and honor should be laid at the doors of the blessed churches with their faithful pastors. That is right and just and it ought to be expressly said in reports and minutes and is said in Arkansas at present. It is not at all sufficient to say “that is understood” or “everybody knows that major credit belongs with the churches.” Safety with Baptists lies in staying close to the churches, in continuous and unfailing recognition of the churches and preachers. They by the grace of God made this day possible. They brought us where we are. They, after the Lord and the Bible, deserve credit for what we are and have today. What is “understood” in this case should be underscored. This book is written with the constraining impulse and conviction that churches and preachers, little churches and little preachers (if there are such) and big churches and big preachers deserve and must have consideration and first honor in any such enterprise. Baptist denominational “directors” will do well to “watch their step.”

-J.S. Rogers

Is there ever an era in our denominational life in which this “caution and reminder” is not timely?

I, too, mourn to think that any Cooperative Program money should be employed to fund lawsuits between Christians. The primary problem is not that CP funding will go toward the legal fees, for CP money always has and always will go to a wide variety of general and administrative costs associated with our missionary enterprise. Part of the intended design of the Cooperative Program is to cover such costs. Lawyers have received CP dollars many times in the past for defending Southern Baptist entities from legal threats, and they will continue to do so in the future. Most of those instances do not earn much in the way of headlines, but they occur with an inexorable regularity.

The problem is not where the money originates, but rather that the lawsuit exists at all. The Bible is plainspoken in 1 Corinthians 6:1-7, commanding us not to take fellow Christians to secular courts. This has been my opinion all along regarding the unfortunate events in Missouri. The folks over at Ethics Daily have contacted SBC Today to indicate their dismay over the potential use of CP money to fund the lawsuit. These conversations have posed something of a dilemma for me. On the one hand, I am not a fan of the lawsuits. On the other hand, the reporting by Ethics Daily and the Baptist General Convention of Missouri is potentially self-serving and might not be motivated strictly out of a love for the Cooperative Program and a desire for reconciliation.

If the good folks at the BGCM and Ethics Daily are working out of the same concerns that I have, it will be easy enough to show it. A simple and fair path exists for those at Ethics Daily, the Baptist General Convention of Missouri, the Missouri Baptist Convention, and the renegade entities. 1 Corinthians 6:2 asks, “If the world is judged by you, are you not competent to constitute the smallest law courts?” Three verses later we read, “I say this to your shame. Is it so, that there is not among you one wise man who will be able to decide between his brethren…?” The biblical manner for resolving this sort of difficulty is for God’s people in the churches to settle the matter, rather than potential unbelievers in the courts.

Therefore, I call upon all of the agencies involved in the Missouri discussion to convene messengers from all of the churches that were a part of the Missouri Baptist Convention in 2000 according to the messenger formula in place in 2000. If Ethics Daily is genuinely alarmed about CP money being spent upon unbiblical lawsuits, then let them encourage the involved parties all to agree to binding arbitration by which the majority of messengers convened in this meeting shall be able to decide finally and irrevocably the disposition of the matters disputed in the lawsuits.

This is the biblical manner for resolving these questions, and I am confident that the Lord will be honored when all of those involved commit to follow this approach.